Rapture in Death - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

J. D. Robb is the pseudonym for a #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than 200 novels, including the bestselling In Death series. There are more than 500 million copies of her books in print.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

chapter one

chapter two

chapter three

chapter four

chapter five

chapter six

chapter seven

chapter eight

chapter nine

chapter ten

chapter eleven

chapter twelve

chapter thirteen

chapter fourteen

chapter fifteen

chapter sixteen

chapter seventeen

chapter eighteen

chapter nineteen

chapter twenty

Mind games . . .

At the flick of a switch, Eve’s face flashed onto a monitor, all pertinent data split-screened beside her. A fascinating woman. Birthplace and parents unknown. The abused child discovered hiding in an alley in Dallas, Texas, body battered, mind blanked. A woman who couldn’t remember the early years of her own life. The years that formed the soul. Years when she had been beaten and raped and tormented.

What did that sort of life do to the mind? To the heart? To the person?

It had made the girl a social worker and had made Eve Dallas into a woman who had become a cop. The cop with the reputation for digging deep, and who had come into some notoriety the previous winter during the investigation of a sensitive and ugly case.

That was when she had met Roarke.

The computer hummed, sliced Roarke’s face onto the screen. Such an intriguing couple. His background was no prettier than the cop’s had been. But he’d chosen, at least initially, the other side of the law to make his mark. And his fortune.

Now they were a set. A set that could be destroyed on a whim.

But not yet. Not for some little time yet.

After all, the game had just begun.

But I do nothing upon myself,
and yet am mine own Executioner.

—John Donne

There is rapture on the lonely shore.

—Lord Byron

chapter one

The alley was dark and stank of piss and vomit. It was home for quick-footed rats and the bony, hungry-eyed felines who hunted them. Red eyes glinted in the dark, some of them human, all of them feral.

Eve’s heart tripped lightly as she slipped into the fetid, damp-edged shadows. He’d gone in, she was sure of it. It was her job to follow, to find him, to bring him in. Her weapon was in her hand, and her hand was steady.

“Hey, sweetcakes, wanna do it with me? Wanna do it?”

Voices out of the dark, harsh with chemicals or cheap brews. Moans of the damned, giggles of the mad. The rats and cats didn’t live here alone. The company of the human garbage that lined the sweating brick walls was no comfort.

She swung her weapon, crouched as she sidestepped a battered recycling unit that, from the smell of it, hadn’t worked in a decade. The stench of food gone over smeared the humid air and turned it into a greasy stew.

Someone whimpered. She saw a boy, about thirteen, all but naked. The sores on his face were festering; his eyes were slits of fear and hopelessness as he scrabbled like a crab back against the filthy wall.

Pity stirred in her heart. She had been a child once, hurt and terrified, hiding in an alley. “I won’t hurt you.” She kept her voice quiet, barely a murmur, kept her eyes on his, maintaining contact as she lowered her weapon.

And that’s when he struck.

He came from behind, a roar of motion and sound. Primed to kill, he swung the pipe. The whistle of it stung her ears as she whirled, dodged. There was barely time to curse herself for losing her concentration, forgetting her primary target as two hundred fifty pounds of muscle and mean sent her flying to the bricks.

Her weapon flew out of her hand and clattered into the dark.

She saw his eyes, the glint of mayhem heightened by the chemical, Zeus. She watched the pipe raised high, timed it, and rolled seconds before it cracked against brick. With a pump of her legs, she dived headfirst into his belly. He grunted, staggered, and as he reached for her throat, she brought her fist up hard, smashing it under his jaw. The force of the blow radiated pain and power up her arm.

People were screaming, scrambling for safety in a narrow world where nothing and no one was safe. She spun, used the impetus of the turn to deliver a roundhouse kick that shattered her adversary’s nose. Blood fountained, adding to the sick miasma of odors.

His eyes were wild, but he barely jerked at the blow. Pain was no match for the god of chemicals. Grinning as blood poured down his face, he smacked the thick pipe on his palm.

“Kill you. Kill you, cop bitch.” He circled her, swinging the pipe like a whistling whip. Grinning, grinning as he bled. “Break your head open and eat your brains.”

Knowing he meant it pumped her adrenaline to flash point. Live or die. Her breath came in pants, the sweat pouring like oil down her skin. She dodged the next blow, went down on her knees. Slapping a hand on her boot, she came up grinning.

“Eat this instead, you son of a bitch.” Her backup weapon was in her hand. She didn’t bother with stun. The stun setting would do little more than tickle a two hundred fifty pound man flying on Zeus. It was set to terminate.

As he lunged toward her, she hit him with full power. His eyes died first. She’d seen it happen before. Eyes that turned to glass like a doll’s, even as he charged her. She sidestepped, prepared to fire again, but the pipe slipped from his fingers. His body began that jerky dance as his nervous system overloaded.

He fell at her feet, a mass of ruined humanity who had played god.

“You won’t be sacrificing any more virgins, asshole,” she muttered, and as that wild energy drained, she rubbed a hand over her face. Her weapon arm dropped.

The faint scrape of leather on concrete alerted her. She started her spin, weapon rising, but arms clamped her, lifted her to her toes.

“Always watch your back, Lieutenant,” the voice whispered just before teeth nipped lightly at her earlobe.

“Roarke, goddamn it. I nearly zapped you.”

“You didn’t even come close.” With a laugh, he turned her in his arms, and his mouth was on hers, hot, hungry. “I love watching you work,” he murmured and his hand, clever hand, slid up her body to cup her breast. “It’s . . . stimulating.”

“Cut it out.” But her heart was thundering in reaction, and the order was halfhearted. “This is no place for a seduction.”

“On the contrary. A honeymoon is a traditional place for a seduction.” He drew her back, kept his hands on her shoulders. “I wondered where you’d gone off to. I should have known.” He glanced down at the body at their feet. “What did he do?”

“He had a predilection for beating the brains out of young women, then eating them.”

“Oh.” Roarke winced, shook his head. “Really, Eve, couldn’t you have come up with something a little less revolting?”

“There was a guy on the Terra Colony a couple of years back who fit the profile, and I wondered . . .” She trailed off, frowning. They were standing in a stinking alley, death at their feet. And Roarke, gorgeous, dark angel Roarke, was wearing a tuxedo and a diamond stud. “What are you all dressed up for?”

“We had plans,” he reminded her. “Dinner?”

“I forgot.” She tucked...